Take Bitcoins, remove the secretive nature of said coins, add e-commerce that doesn’t involve illicit drugs, and Jeff Bezos’ bald head while you’re making the order, and you have Amazon Coins. Or as your parents called it, Flooz.
The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.
That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. ”Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.
The inclusion of the Federal Reserve is significant. For the platinum coin idea to work, the Federal Reserve would have to treat it as a legal way for the Treasury Department to create currency. If they don’t believe it’s legal and would not credit the Treasury Department’s deposit, the platinum coin would be worthless.
Well they didn’t say anything about a platinum egg, right? So there’s still hope! (Note: Sarcasm.)
antigovernmentextremist says: Short Form Blog. I’m disappointed. I expected so much better from you. The fact that this is even considered a viable option shows just how far off the handle America is.
» SFB says: I’m not actually in favor of the platinum coin — it’s a weird, crazy idea that deserves the eyerolls it’s getting. I mocked it two nights ago, even. But if you’re going to talk about it, at least get the semantics right. You can be critical of something without misleading people. — Ernie @ SFB
FYI, platinum coin critics: They do not need to actually make the coin out of $1 trillion in platinum; they just need to value it at $1 trillion. (ht @dceiver)
A proposal to phase out the $1 bill and replace it with a $1 coin could be gaining currency as the “supercommittee” looks to find ways to save the government money.
Now that’s CHANGE we can believe in! Zing! Conan, you need any writers?
In all seriousness, this seems like a largely reasonable proposal that, like all reasonable proposals, has a few interest groups working against it. For example, the armored car lobby—which you’d probably never thought about prior to reading this sentence—is opposed to switching over to coins, as that would make their truckload heavier and cost them more on gas.
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